Teaching Scandinavian Interaction Design in West Africa

Methods for interaction design have emerged and established themselves first in a Scandinavian context, later in US context and in the rest of the developed world. While good usability and good user experiences are important to all users of ICT, the question is whether the methods and techniques that were mainly developed in Scandinavia, Europe and US are suitable for ICT development in West Africa? Can ideals for user-involvement be directly transferred? This paper aims to initiate a discussion of the communication of interaction design knowledge in West Africa by discussing whether insights from Scandinavian Participatory design can be used to localize the learning process and make interaction design methods sensitive to the West African context. The paper is based on the author’s reflection on his experiences teaching interaction design in West Africa.